


By Any Other Name:  A Lesson in Hubris

by Cheree_Cargill



Series: Glimpses of a Life [54]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-06
Updated: 2018-04-06
Packaged: 2019-04-19 06:15:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14231094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheree_Cargill/pseuds/Cheree_Cargill
Summary: The Kelvans have come to conquer the Milky Way galaxy.  Spock is skeptical of their chance of success.





	By Any Other Name:  A Lesson in Hubris

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: The Star Trek characters are the property of Paramount Studios, Inc.  The story contents are the creation and property of Cheree Cargill and is copyright (c) 2018 by Cheree Cargill.  This story is Rated G.

 

  _Stardate:_ _4658_.6 _._ _Personal Log. First Officer Spock recording._

 

We have returned to the planet where we found the Kelvans and they have restored our crewmembers to their full human forms.  Our only casualty is Yeoman Julie Thompson, crushed by Rojan as a show of power after he had reduced her and Lt. Shea to cuboctahedral forms.  She had only been aboard for four months and was just 23 years of age.  Captain Kirk now has the sad duty of contacting Starfleet Command to relay this loss and Starfleet will then contact the girl’s parents.  The Captain will write a letter of condolence to accompany Yeoman Thompson’s personal possession back to her family.  It is a duty I do not envy him.  Such a sad and meaningless death of such a young woman.  I will include her in my Prayers for the Departed, although she was not Vulcan.  May her _katra_ join the All.

I have turned my thoughts to the Kelvans who had spent centuries in the intergalactic void traveling from the Andromeda Galaxy to the Milky Way with the ostensible purpose to “conquer” it.  It seems rather pointless to send a ship that whole long way – 0.79 megaparsecs away, almost 2,560,000 lightyears – when there are numerous galactic objects much closer.  Andromeda has at least 19 satellite galaxies, as well as numerous globular clusters and other star groups.  Would these not have served them better?

Likewise, it is illogical that they should send out only one ship.  Granted they are an extremely long-lived and powerful race, judging from the glimpse I got from Kelinda’s mind when I attempted to meld with her, but that one ship could have easily been destroyed … as indeed it was.  We found only five Kelvans still alive onboard the escape shuttle that crashed here.

It is more likely that the original Kelvans dispatched an entire fleet of ships to explore all their nearby neighbors.  Andromeda and the Milky Way comprise only the largest members of the Local Group, but there are over 54 galaxies just in this neighborhood of the universe.  And the Local Group is just a small part of the Virgo Supercluster which itself is a part of the Laniakea Supercluster.  There are at least 15 more superclusters the size of Laniakea.  That is only within the 8 billion lightyears of visible light.  Who knows how many more lie beyond our pitiful ability to detect them? 

Of course, it is possible that the Kelvans, if indeed they were telling the truth about their journey here, may have already conquered and used up their nearby galactic neighbors, although this is hard to fathom.  Besides their nearby stellar clusters, the barred spiral galaxy Triangulum, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, and numerous dwarf galaxies would also provide fertile ground for their colonization.

I find the Kelvans’ hubris almost laughable.  We in our tiny corner of the Milky Way, the fraction that we have explored of this miniscule section of the Sagittarius Arm, which only comprises a few million star systems, have found old and powerful races that would annihilate the Kelvans without significant thought.  Five of them believing they will conquer this entire whirlpool of stars, planets, nebulae, quasars, pulsars, black holes, and dark matter?  Or even should they get their message back to Kelva and the Kelvans dispatch an army to the Milky Way, it would take millennia for their conquest to take effect.  As Dr. McCoy would say, “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

But are not we ourselves, the worlds and peoples who make up the Federation guilty of just as much deceit and pride?  We have not even completely explored the Alpha Quadrant.  Who knows what lies in the other three quadrants that we have designated and, indeed, what is beyond that?  What lies on the far side of this spiral of stars, on the Outer Rim and the various galactic arms and at the Core?  What parallel universes exist?  What interdimensional planes of existence?  What races that are so far advanced that we might rightly think of them as gods?  We think we have “been out among the stars” but we have hardly scratched the surface.  The little bit that we have mapped has shown innumerable other races and governments that have already laid claim to their neighborhood of stars.  None of them will welcome “conquerors” from beyond our galaxy.  No, I fear that the Kelvans are doomed to fail in this effort.  Perhaps we are doomed as well, but it is not something I will see in my lifetime.  At least I hope not.

I think of what a human scientist once said: “The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we _can_ imagine.”  Let us hope that when we encounter that strangeness, we are wise enough to welcome it and learn from it.

THE END

 

 

 


End file.
